Personal musings on Israel, Jewish matters, history and how they all affect each other

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Seamus Milne Is Correct - and Evil

Seamus Milne lives in a different reality than most people I know. This isn't new - back when I wrote Right to Exist I cited an outlandish article of his to illustrate the oddities the Guardian is capable of. (The newspaper has since gotten worse). Now, however, having spearheaded the paper's Palestine Papers project, he sums up what he's learned from it, or rather, what he always believed but has now had re-confirmed. Any Palestinian leadership which is willing to compromise with Israel so that both nations embark on peaceful co-existence is an evil leadership which must be overthrown; the only way toward peace is to have the Palestinians get everything they demand and the Israelis forced to give it to them.

One doesn't expect better from Seamus, of course. Yet in his present column he is actually more revealing. His thesis, that the only arrangement acceptable to the Palestinians will mean dismantling Israel, is actually plausible; it may well be correct. Yet note how he couches this:

It's a study in the decay of what in Yasser Arafat's heyday was an authentic national liberation movement. Try to imagine the Vietnamese negotiators speaking in such a way at the Paris peace talks in the 70s – or the Algerian FLN in the 60s – and it's obvious how far the West Bank Palestinian leadership has drifted from its national moorings.

The role models for authentic liberation movements? Arafat in his heyday, when his troops were murdering Israeli children in Maalot or Avivim; the communist Vietnamese, and the FLN. Arafat's movement differs, however, in that it didn't succeed, moans Seamus, and the Palestinians must return to those days of glory and achieve the successes of... whom? The North Vietnamese? The FLN?

Seamus Milne hates real people. He hates them with a passion. The only thing he loves are a set of warped and cruel ideas. If millions of Vietnamese have to suffer for his ideas, or generations of them live in a stunted impoverished and primitive country, great; if Algeria is one of the least humane regimes in the world, who cares so long as the French have been vanquished half a century ago by an authentic movement of liberation. This is what needs to happen to the Palestinians, too, and the sooner the better.

The Guardian is creating a new political concept to explain the PA’s failures – “folly” and “betrayal”. The fact that the PA would never actually reach an agreement does not show “intransigence” – it shows the “folly” of a weaker party trying to negotiate with a stronger party and the “betrayal” of its people, according to an article titled The Palestinian cause has been betrayed. But no more by Osama Hamdan who “is head of the Hamas international relations department” (forgive me while I smile at the concept of “Hamas’ international relations”).

According to the Guardian, Israel demonstrates “intransigence” in negotiations in agreeing to many of the Palestinian positions; the Palestinians demonstrate “folly” and “betrayal” in agreeing to any of Israel’s positions.

3. The Guardian is creating a new political concept to explain the PA’s failures – “folly” and “betrayal”.

The fact that the PA would never actually reach an agreement does not show “intransigence” – it shows the “folly” of a weaker party trying to negotiate with a stronger party and the “betrayal” of its people, according to an article titled "The Palestinian cause has been betrayed. But no more" by Osama Hamdan who “is head of the Hamas international relations department” (forgive me while I smile at the concept of “Hamas’ international relations”).

According to the Guardian, Israel demonstrates “intransigence” in negotiations in agreeing to many of the Palestinian positions; the Palestinians demonstrate “folly” and “betrayal” in agreeing to any of Israel’s positions.

Of course, where that leaves us in terms of reaching an agreement has not been made clear. What is the alternative? Why was the settlement of the Northern Ireland crisis (such as it is) successful when a weaker party negotiated with Britain? Was Britain “intransigent” in not agreeing to IRA demands? Why was that not “folly” and “betrayal” by the Irish? Well, no doubt the IRA has factions that think the N. Ireland agreement was exactly that, as does Hamas – but the Guardian does not appear to support the IRA, as it does Hamas.

Palestinian propahandists have created a Golem that has now broke lose: the Useful Idiot Corps. The UIC feel betrayed by the PA leadership and will not allow anyone ahd certainly not Palestinian "traitors" to interfere in their war against Zionism. The delegitimization project has backfired. The delegitimizer has been delegitimized.

The consensus position at the Guardian seems to be outrage at Israel for passing up an offer that the PA had no moral right and no authority to make, and no true Palestinian would have honoured. And this makes Israel the impediment to peace.

The Guardian thinks the Holocaust denier Abbas and his Fatah military wing, Al Aksa, are not hard core enough against Israel.

The Guardian speaks out of both sides of their mouth in any case. Out of one side, they and people of their ilk insist that the Palestinians are moderate and have only been painted as terrorists by the evil, colonialist west. Out of the other side they (specifically Seamus) say that Hamas and all they stand for, including "armed resistence" (aka suicide bombings) are the true representatives of the Palestinians.

At this point Israel needs to make some bold steps. They need to start setting the agenda. They need to announce borders (which can be negotiated later on) and take the lead. Give the Palestinians the state they claim that they want. It will totally blindside them.

As for:...outrage at Israel for passing up an offer that the PA had no moral right and no authority to make, and no true Palestinian would have honoured....

it is well put; but are you absolutely sure that the Palestinians even made the offer?

If they did make an offer that was "passed up," then the situation is absurd enough; it becomes even more absurd if they never made the offer to begin with.

Especially if they rejected an offer, or more correctly, (perhaps) rejected a proposal; since when negotiating (or "negotiating"), there are always proposals and counter-proposals, offers and counter-offers....

Both sides reject proposals (or offers) when there is no agreement.

So is the question, then: who rejected the final counter-proposal?

I suppose that would depend on the nature of that particular counter-proposal (i.e., how far off---unrealistic?---it would have been).

That the Palestinians now deny having made anything remotely resembling what they were said to have made such make any thinking, fair-minded person understand what exactly is---was---going on.

You don't have to go as far as this Seamus fellow to see this distorted thinking. The well-known Jewish Israel bashers such as Richard Silverstein, "Jerry Haber"-Magnes Zionist, MJ Rosenberg, Rabbi Brant Rosen are also screaming about the PA's "betrayal" of the Palestinian cause. Also some of the "972" group is joining in. One of the few major Israel bashers who says he is in favor of a "compromise peace" is Bernard Avishai who is due to release interviews he make with Abbas and Olmert (if you want to believe them). Avishai is denouncing the Guardian for its trashing the PA.This group views the Palestinian demands as being non-negotiable. The only thing they view as "just" is an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-67 lines and an UNRESTRICTED RIGHT OF RETURN OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES (ROR) . They OPPOSE the "settlement blocs", the "Clinton Parameters" and the "solution everyone knows the terms of" which Beilin and the more mainline Israeli Left has been pushing for years.Regarding the ROR they assure us that "only" 700,000 will actually want to return and that is no problem with this.I have a friend who was born in the US (now living in Israel) who was active as a radical Marxist and worked assiduously to bring about a "workers uprising" in the US (he is now a right-wing, pro-settlement Orthodox Israeli). He keeps laughing when I tell him the crazy things these Israel bashers are saying (recalling that Silverstein and MJ Rosenberg claim to be "Zionists" at the same time they are cursing Israel) and all the contradictory positions they keep spouting. He says I don't understand but extremists of this type get to the point that they completely identify with their warped ideology and they become emotionally beholden to it. That is why they end up in a permanent state of rage and they often view anyone who opposes them as an enemy who must be eradicated, not as someone to be engaged in dialogue and persuasion with. This is the source of this hatred they so often spew out.

I suggest everyone read Dr Ernest Sternberg's milestone paper on "Purificationism" to understand the new radical ideology and its need to eliminate all oppositionist views.:

Milne's idea that the Palestinian is an 'authentic national movement' is a perversion of the truth. It is Zionism, Kurdish, Berber and Assyrian nationalism and the struggles of all the repressed indigenous minorities (some predating Arab imperialism by 1,000 years) for self-expression and civil rights which are authentic liberation movements. By siding and offering encouragement to Hamas, Milne is supporting the worst form of reactionary, homophobic, misogynistic and antisemitic forces in the region.

I was trying to characterise the Guardian's attitude. For myself, no, I'm not sure whether the PA made that offer. (I guess we're not allowed to call it a Palestinian offer, as the PA speak for no-one but themselves — or, at least, they don't speak for the Guardian.) I'm not sure whether the "Palestine Papers" are transcripts or merely notes, I have no idea who leaked them and what his, her or their agenda is, I don't know whether they're complete, or representative, or cherry-picked for effect by the leaker(s), by the Guardian, or both, and I can only guess at what the same series of meetings would look like if we had only Israeli records to go on, or had both sets.

Almost everything that I don't know the people at the Guardian don't either, but they have faith that every Palestinian utterance is the word of God and anything Israeli comes from the devil, and religion provides certainty. What stands out for me is that for the contemporary British left, or at least that (considerable) part of it represented by the Guardian, there is no longer any need to make arguments that even appear coherent: Their feet have completely left the ground.